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Worship Service | Adult Sunday School
Helpless in the storm, surround your angel's home. His pleasure is our hope. Rise up, hopefully, before.
Hallelujah.
Hey, Dave? I can't hear the girls in the monitors. Okay, Dave, can you check my volume levels in Cornell's monitor, please? Okay, can you hear me back there now? Check one, two. Okay, is it too loud or is it good?
Testing one, two. Okay, and then your piano. Can you hear it back there?
Okay.
Be thou my vision. Oh, not be all else to me. Say that thou art strong in thy presence. Be thou my wisdom and thou my true word.
Dave, could we get Cornell's piano volume turned up a little bit in his monitor, please? We'll try it. I think that'll work. I hear you a lot.
It has a voice that blends, and what I'm doing, I just kind of follow.
There we are.
Good morning.
If you're going to join us for adult Sunday school class, please come into the sanctuary here and find a seat.
All right.
Let's pray before we begin. Father, your word is true and it is clear. Your word is a precious treasure to us, and it is what we hunger for as your people. So, we long to be fed from your word and to know the truth and to know you as you have revealed yourself in Scripture, and we're just grateful that you have not only given to us your word, that it is also grateful that it is inerrant and inspired, that you have preserved it for us, that you have kept it and kept it pure, and we are grateful for.
That.
We pray that you would help us to see today how it is that you have done that and to be able to evaluate other writings from the same time period in light of truth. Help us to understand how it is that you have preserved your word so that we may give you honor and glory for that great work that you have done.
As your people, we praise you and we thank you and we ask your blessing upon this time and our study here this morning in Christ's name.
Amen.
Well, in your God Wrote a Book lesson book, we are in lesson number 13, the Septuagint, the Apocrypha, the Pseudepigrapha, and other big words. Lesson 13, and last week we looked at the first two of those, the Septuagint and the Apocrypha and what that meant and what those, what those things are.
The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Old Testament that was completed before the time of Christ. It was the Old Testament Bible of Jesus and the Apostles. It is what is quoted most of the time in the New Testament when the Apostles quote Scripture either in their writings or in their speaking.
They are quoting from the Septuagint of their day, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. And then the Apocrypha are those writings written between the Old Testament, the end of the Old Testament time period and the beginning of the New Testament time period.
The Apocrypha refers also to the collection of books that has been canonized by the Catholic Church in the 1500s and they accept them as Scripture and Protestants, of course, reject those books as Holy Scripture and we talked about last week why.
So today we are looking at the Pseudepigrapha, the Pseudepigrapha. The Pseudepigrapha, and this is number three in lesson 13, the Pseudepigrapha means false writings. The Pseudepigrapha means false writings and this refers to those writings which were circulated in the first two or three centuries of the Christian Church which falsely claimed to have been written by one of the Apostles or someone so closely associated with them.
So they were false writings circulated within the first two to three centuries after the life of Jesus. So these are writings that were written after the time of the Apostles, so we are talking about the year 100 to 300 in that period of time, those first couple of centuries there.
Writings which claimed to have been written by the Apostles or by somebody closely associated with the Apostles and we refer to those as the false writings of the Pseudepigrapha. And we see that even during Paul's lifetime there were false writings that circulated claiming to be written by the Apostle Paul himself.
He makes mention to this, he makes mention of his own signature and how that was the denotation in all of his writings of that which he had written. 2 Thessalonians 2 verses 1 to 2, Paul says, Now we request you, brethren, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, that you be not quickly shaken from your composure or be disturbed either by a spirit or a message or a letter as if from us to the effect that the day of the Lord has already come.
That's 2 Thessalonians. So Paul makes mention there of them being disturbed by a letter that claimed that it came from him as if there was this letter circulating in the Thessalonican church that claimed Paul as its authorship that said the day of the Lord, the judgment had already.
Come.
And so Paul makes mention of the fact that people were writing even in his own day letters that supposedly came from him. So in 1 Corinthians 16 .21, also from the hands of Paul, he says, This greeting is in my own hand, Paul.
Galatians 6 .11, See with what large letters I am writing to you, with my own hand. Colossians 4 .18, I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. 2 Thessalonians 3 .17, I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand.
And this is a distinguishing mark in every letter. This is the way I write. And Philemons 19 says, I, Paul, am writing with my own hand. He said that quite frequently, didn't he? Did you ever notice that as you read through the New Testament epistles?
Paul makes mention in his actual, his authentic, legitimate letters that he wrote, Paul makes mention of the fact that he was writing with his own hand. He said this is the distinguishing mark. There was something about Paul's writing that the early church was able to look at and identify this is a letter from the Apostle Paul.
While there were other letters circulating in the time that bore Paul's name, people were writing them saying this is from Paul, or they would refer to letters that were written by Paul, and so Paul needed a way to certify or authenticate what letters actually came.
From him.
Most of the pseudepigraphal writings that we have, these false writings, come from what is referred to as the Nag Hammadi Library, and this is letter B under number 3, the Nag Hammadi Library. How many of you know what the Nag Hammadi Library is?
Anybody here familiar with the Nag Hammadi Library? Is it in Japan? No, it is not.
It's close.
It's close. In December of 1945, a peasant digging for fertilizer unearthed a large earthenware.
Vessel.
Now, I don't know why peasants are digging for fertilizer and why there were earthenware vessels buried where he thought there was going to be fertilizer, but that is what happened. This earthenware vessel contained 13 papyrus books made up of 52 different texts, and this was located along the east bank of the Nile in Upper Egypt, so close to Japan.
Near the town of Nag Hammadi, the documents were from sometime in the 5th century and they had been written sometime in the 2nd and 3rd century, but the copies of these, the Nag Hammadi Library's copies from the 5th century of documents that were written in the 2nd and 3rd century.
So, they're not original documents, the Nag Hammadi Library. They're copies of ones that came from the 2nd and 3rd century. And the Nag Hammadi Library was largely a collection of a Gnostic sect, S-E-C-T, a Gnostic sect.
Now, if you know anything about Gnosticism, then you know that one of the teachings of Gnosticism is that anything physical is bad, anything spiritual is good. So, they had this radical dichotomy where they believed that God could not, of course, become a man and dwell among us because if God became man, then he would be in human flesh and that would be a bad thing.
So, everything physical, all things tangible and physical are bad, and everything spiritual or ethereal is good, and that was the Gnostic religion. Of course, this had all kinds of implications for theology.
Even in the New Testament, you see references to the seed ideas of Gnosticism, even in the 1st century. Paul, in the book of Colossians, he's using some Gnostic language in order to attack Gnostic ideas about fullness and being full, and so he uses the term fullness all the way through the book of Colossians to refer to certain Gnostic heresies that he is correcting in that book.
In the book of 1st John, John is attacking what he saw as some Gnostic tendencies when he says that the word of life which came and dwelt among us, we have handled him, we have seen him with our own eyes, we have heard this one.
He's referring to Christ who dwelt and came amongst us and says that anybody who denies that Jesus Christ came in the flesh is the Antichrist or an Antichrist. John was dealing with those Gnostic ideas even in the 1st century.
Well, by the time you get into the 2nd and 3rd century, the Gnostic theology and Gnostic tendencies had reached full bloom and they had implemented and woven themselves into the fabric of life in that day so that there were so many expressions of Gnostic thinking and so many expressions of Gnostic sex all over the place that there were many who had taken Christianity and Gnosticism and tried to blend them into sort of a synchronistic Christian Gnosticism, and this became quite popular.
You see, by the way, the same thing happening in our own day in some ways with Gnostic ideology and thinking as Christians try and blend a lot of the worldly thinking with social justice and critical race theory and intersectionality and Marxism and all this stuff gets blended together and so you have people who are saying that this is Christianity and they're kind of teaching some of these new ideas rather than keeping firm in the faith regarding Christianity and its teachings and essential doctrines.
They begin to blend this with whatever the spirit of the age is. Well, Gnosticism was the spirit of the age in the second and third centuries. It came to full bloom and affected everything, philosophy, religion, theology.
It just worked its way into everything and so you had these Gnostic sects that would pop up and they would need, of course, books that were sympathetic to their Gnostic theology. So Gnosticism denied the deity of Christ.
They believed that matter was evil so Jesus never came in the flesh. Irenaeus wrote this against the Gnostics. He says, quote, every one of them generates something new day by day according to his ability for no one is deemed perfect who does not develop some mighty fiction, close quote.
And so one of the Gnostic ideas or theologies was that you needed to have, by the way, the word Gnostic comes from the Greek word gnosis which means to know and the basic premise of Gnosticism is that there is a higher level of knowledge that is available to a select few, an elite.
All of us down here in the cheap seats or up here in the cheap seats, I guess, if you go down, those are the expensive seats, but all of us up here in the cheap seats that don't have this enlightened view of humanity and nature and theology that we're cut off from that knowledge.
But if you could be sort of incorporated or initiated into the sect, into the inner circle, you could get the private revelations. You could get the secret meaning of things in the text and the Spirit would reveal these things to you.
That information was not available to everybody. It was only available to a select few. They were the ones in the know, in the gnosis, the Gnostics. They had the knowledge that nobody else had. That was the basis of Gnosticism.
Well, you see a lot of this ideology and theology come out in some of the writings of the Nag Hamadi Library. So let me give you some examples of the pseudepigraphal books. The Gospel of Thomas. You see the Gospel of Thomas makes headlines.
I know, I'm picking on Thomas. The Gospel of Thomas makes headlines almost every year around this time, around resurrection time. Because right about, probably in about a month from now when Christians, Orthodox Christians and we who are in the Christian faith begin to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, you're going to see some headline or some documentary on the History Channel that is going to give a lot of time and attention to the Gospel of Thomas and some of these other Nag Hamadi writings.
And they're going to give this attention to the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Philip and others because they give us a early first century view of what Christianity was really.
Like.
I'm not arguing that they don't. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John give us an early first century view of what Christians really.
Believed.
The Gospel of Thomas does not. The Gospel of Thomas is written long after the events of the life of Jesus by people who weren't even apostles and were not eyewitnesses. So they don't give us any new information about what early Christianity was like.
They do give us a lot of information about what the Gnostic sects claimed to be Christians in the Nag Hamadi area were like. They don't tell us anything about first century Judaism around the time of Jesus and the apostles or what early Christians believed.
So, the Gospel of Thomas contains 114 sayings supposedly uttered by Jesus. Some of the sayings are found in the Gospels like, for instance, Matthew 15, 14. If a blind man leads a blind man, they both fall into a pit.
Well, the Gospel of Thomas saying 34 also contains the same information. There are 13 parables included in the Gospel of Thomas which find parallels in the Gospels. Even though the parallels in the Gospel of Thomas are the parables, the parallel parables in the Gospel of Thomas are slightly shorter than the Gospels parallels in the synoptic Gospels.
By the way, if you find a parallel between the Gospel of Thomas and a saying that Jesus said and, for instance, Matthew or Matthew's parables and parables contained in a shorter form in the Gospel of Thomas, does that prove that the Gospel of Thomas is inspired?
No, it doesn't. What would it tell us?
Sorry?
They're similar? One quoted the other? It would tell us that maybe the author of the Gospel of Thomas was familiar with the synoptic Gospels, right? Might have borrowed some of that material. If you want to craft a deception to get people to believe that what you are writing is legitimate, what would you do?
You'd weave a little bit of truth in there, right? You'd weave some things in there that Christians are familiar with. So if they're reading it, they would say, oh, yeah, that sounds just like Matthew.
Those are parables. This must be inspired. That's the point behind that. So the similarity in itself does not identify it as an inspired document. That similarity just shows that the author was familiar in some way with the writings of the New Testament.
The Gospel of Thomas also contains total nonsense, and this is why it's named the Gospel of Thomas. So, for instance, saying number 14 says this. If you fast, you will give rise to sin for yourselves, and if you pray, you will be condemned.
And if you give alms, you will do harm to your spirits. When you go into any land and walk about in the districts, if they receive you, eat what they will set before you, and heal the sick among them.
For what goes into your mouth will not defile you, but that which issues from your mouth is that which will defile you. Now some of that sounds eerily similar to some things that Jesus said, right? Not what goes into a man that defiles him, but what comes out of the man comes out of the heart, and the heart is desperately wicked and deceitful.
That sounds eerily similar to something Jesus would say, as well as, if you go into a city and they receive you, then eat what is set before you. But Jesus said something very similar to that when he said if they won't receive you, then kick the dust off of your feet and walk and go on to the next city.
So you can see some parallels. But what do we make of this statement? If you fast, you'll give rise to sin. If you pray, you'll be condemned. And if you give alms, you will do harm to your spirits. That stuff is nonsense.
Saying number 45 says, If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. You know what that means? Yeah, somebody in the back just shook their head like, what? Now see, if you were one of the Gnostic elites, you would know what that means.
You guys in the cheap seats, you don't necessarily know what that means. But the elite, they would know what that means, and they would be able to read the Gospel of Thomas and give to you its true sense, its true meaning.
Simon Peter said to them, Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life. Jesus said, I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males.
For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven. There's transgenderism in the second century, right? Saying number 22, Jesus saw infants being suckled. He said to his disciples, These infants being suckled are like those who enter the kingdom.
They said to him, Shall we then as children enter the kingdom? Jesus said to them, When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside, and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male, nor the female female, and when you fashion eyes in the place of an eye, and a hand in the place of a hand, and a foot in the place of a foot, and a likeness in the place of a likeness, then you will enter the kingdom.
Now that's just gibberish, is it not? But not to the Gnostic. That's not gibberish. To the Gnostic, they can make that sound like that is profound wisdom right out of the mouth of Solomon, because they have the knowledge that nobody else has.
Now what is ironic is that quote-unquote scholars today will tell us that the Gospel of Thomas is a reliable gospel from the early days of Christianity, and that the Gospel of Thomas really should guide our understanding and interpretation of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and the early documents of the Christian faith.
That the Gospel of Thomas is more reliable than Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. That's what scholars today want you to believe. But you, as a believer in Jesus Christ, can obviously tell the difference between the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Matthew.
Can you not? Can you not see the qualitative difference between the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Thomas? If you can't see the qualitative difference, you do not have the Spirit of God. It really is that simple.
These are not gospels that are in any way in competition for canonicity with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So, these quotes from the Gospel of Thomas, this is typical of the kind of nonsensical and enlightened nature of Gnostic writings, because you had to have that higher knowledge in order to tell what they really meant.
The four Gospels predated Thomas by at least 100 years, and some skeptics claim that the Gospel of Thomas represents the beliefs of the early Christians, and that simply is not true, because what they do represent is the beliefs of an apostate, heretical, unorthodox Gnostic sect.
That's what the Gospel of Thomas represents, not the beliefs of the first century Christians. You want to know what first century Christians believed and taught about the person of Christ, you read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
If you want to know what some Egyptian Gnostic sect, some heretical apostate group out in the middle of the Egyptian desert believed about the person of Christ, then you read the Gnostic Gospels. How about the Gospel of Philip?
The Gospel of Philip does not claim to be the teaching of Jesus, and most of it's very esoteric, like this, for instance. Quote, light and darkness, life and death, right and left, are brothers of one another.
They're inseparable. Because of this, neither are the good good, nor evil evil, nor is life life, nor death death. For this reason, each one will dissolve into its earliest origin, but those who are exalted above the world are indissoluble and eternal.
Close quote.
That make sense to you?
Yeah.
If you put me alone in a room with a year's supply of heroin, I could not come up with anything like some of this stuff. It's so esoteric and out in the ether that you just wonder how anybody came up with this.
Well, this would make perfect sense if you were part of a Gnostic sect and you're taught what these higher meanings of this nonsense is about. The Gospel of Philip quotes some phrases from the Gospels, including indicating that it was written after the Gospels and were written and widely circulated.
So again, the Gospel of Philips, the similarity in some wording only indicates that the canonical Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which are in our New Testament, that these were widely circulated and had gotten around enough that they had influenced some of the language of people who wrote Gospels after the canonical Gospels were written.
The Gospel of Mary contains nothing about the life of Christ. It contains mystic teaching attributed to Mary Magdalene. Supposedly it was Mary who roused the disciples to action and courage. Supposedly they were the secret things that Jesus gave to Mary that she passed on to his disciples.
And the Gospel of Mary portrays Mary Magdalene as a favorite of Jesus, possessing more knowledge and insight than the apostles. The Apocryphon of James. Apocrypha means hidden or secret, as we talked about last week.
The Apocryphon of James claims to be a secret revelation to James, the brother of Jesus. It does not quote from the Gospels, but does demonstrate a familiarity with the parables in the Gospels. It claims Jesus stayed with the disciples for 18 days after the resurrection instead of 40.
Those are some of the examples of the pseudepigraphal writings. I want you to turn, if you can, to page... What page is it? I don't have the page number here. Just to the end of this lesson. You see the page that lists the pseudepigraphal writings?
The next page? All right. You'll notice there that there are all kinds of Gospels. The Gospel of Thomas is a favorite one. That's why we spent a little bit of time on this. We also have the Gospel of the Ebionites, the Gospel of Peter, the Pro-Evangelium of James, the Gospel of the Egyptians, the Arabic Gospel of Childhood, the Gospel of Nicodemus, the Gospel of Joseph the Carpenter, the History of Joseph the Carpenter, the Passing of Mary, the Gospel of the Nativity of Mary, the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, the Gospel of the Twelve, the Gospel of Barnabas, Bartholomew, Hebrews, Marcion, Andrew, Matthias, Peter, and Philip.
That's a lot of Gospels, right? Now you say, why were our four chosen? Why are we stuck with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? You mean there's 21 other Gospels out there that we could be reading? That Jim could be preaching through?
I spent seven years in the Gospel of John. How about if we just start at the top of this list and go through the Gospel of Thomas and then work our way down through that? Why are we cut off from such a rich wealth of knowledge and information about the Lord?
There's not enough time for me to preach through that. That's absolutely true. We have all of these other Gospels. What makes our four set apart? What makes them unique? They're written by Apostles or people closely associated with Apostles.
Matthew and John were both Apostles. Mark associated with Peter and Luke associated with Paul. We have basically Gospels authenticated by Matthew, Paul, Peter, and John. It's four Apostles. Not only that, but the four Gospels that we have in our New Testament were written in the first century.
Mark, written very early, probably within 15 to 20 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. Matthew, probably written next. Luke was probably the third one written. Luke was probably written toward the end of Paul's ministry while Paul was in prison in Rome.
That's probably when Luke wrote the Gospel of Luke as well as the Book of Acts. You're talking about 60 to 62 A .D. for Luke. Actually, the Gospel of Luke probably would have been written while Paul was two years in Caesarea under Felix and Festus before he was shipped off to Rome.
He spent two years in prison there. Two years that Luke just skips over in like one verse. Paul stayed there two years and then this thing happened and he's off again. Well, during that two years, Luke would have been there with Paul in Caesarea and had access to all the eyewitnesses.
Mary and some of the disciples and the people who were there who saw the miracles that Luke records. That's why at the beginning of Luke's Gospel he says, these things I've carefully researched and identified for you so that you may know the truth concerning Jesus and what he began to do and to teach.
Luke talks about his study and his research into these things as a historian. Then the Gospel of John, I believe, probably written sometime before 70 A .D. Within 40 years after the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, you have all four of those Gospels being written probably in that order, Mark, Matthew, Luke and then John, all within 40 years.
Now,.
Every year at Christmas and Easter we're supposed to take those eyewitness accounts and we're supposed to jettison them in favor of the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Mary. That make sense to you? Something written 200 years later after all of the eyewitnesses were dead by people who had never met or seen Jesus while he walked the face of the earth?
We're supposed to exchange the Gospel of Thomas for Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? There's a shell game being played by people, skeptics and critics, who try and pass this off every year as if it's legitimate scholarship.
And it's not. We reject these writings for good reason. They're late, they're gnostic, they do not represent the first century church or Christianity, they do not represent what Jesus and the apostles taught, they're not apostolic, and they were never accepted on a wide scale by the Christian church.
Ever. Ever. They were accepted on a wide scale by a gnostic sect that lived in the Nag Hammadi Valley in Egypt. They were accepted by them, but never by the church at large. That's why we don't accept them as canonical.
Yes? Remember, these are Gospels or writings that claim to have been written by an apostle or someone close to an apostle. But they were written in the 2nd and 3rd century, so they're not written by Peter, nor are they written to the Hebrews or by the Hebrews.
These are writings that originated in a gnostic sect that claim to have been written by apostles or people closely associated with the apostles.
Alright?
Did you know that... Yes? Do what act as a group? The books? I don't know that, no.
Yep.
Yeah, very good. It's a great point. It shows the significance and the widespread acceptance of the canonical Gospels, the four Gospels that we have, that they would feel the need to attach themselves to that for legitimacy and authenticity.
Yeah, every good lie has.
An element of the truth. Yep. Yeah.
Right.
The devil never comes out with full error, 100 error, because then you can identify it. He takes the skin of the truth, he stuffs it with a big lie so that it looks like the truth and smells like the truth and appears to be the truth.
That's why he's an angel of light. He doesn't come at us with a pitchfork and horns and a red tail with an arrow point on the end of it. It's not how the devil presents himself. He comes to us looking as if it's the truth.
That's how you deceive.
People. Yes?
No, we do not know authorship. No. If the real author of any of these is known, I don't know which one it is.
Okay? Yes?
Yeah, it does. What appears to be the truth but is a lie attracts a lot of people. That's why the way is narrow and the road is broad and it leads to destruction. Jesus said that.
Yes?
Would Irenaeus have known about the Gnostic writings and who wrote them? He may have. Yeah. People at that time may have known.
Who wrote them. Not that I know of.
No, not been preserved that I know of.
Alright, you also have multiple books of acts. You have the Acts of Peter and John and Andrew, Thomas, Paul, Matthias, Philip. Matthias, by the way, who was a genuine apostle, genuine disciple. The Acts of Philip, the Acts of Thaddeus.
There are epistles there. The Letter Attributed to Our Lord, The Lost Epistle to the Corinthians, The Six Letters of Paul to Seneca, The Epistle of Paul to the Laodiceans, and then multiple Apocalypses.
Apocalypses? What's the plural of Apocalypses?
That's a good question.
I don't know.
You proofread everything I say. No? Got nothing for me? The Apocalypses of Peter and Paul, Thomas, Stephen, Second Apocalypse of James, Misos, Dostoeus, the last three were found at Nag Hammadi, and then your other works, The Secret Book of John, Traditions of Matthew, and the Dialogue of the Savior.
Norm Geisler and Nix in their book From God to Us has a detailed description of each one of these Gnostic writings and pseudepigraphal writings. So, that's a collection of all kinds of books written and many of them found in the Nag Hammadi Library.
Kind of gives you an idea of what's out there. You'll notice that there are historical books and Gospels and Epistles and Apocalypses.
Do scholars today agree on when these books were written, that they were written in the second and third centuries, or do they disagree on the timing of the writings? That's the question. From what I understand, there's no disagreement as to when these books were written.
I don't think that there's any scholar who thinks the Gospel of Thomas was written in the first century. What they try and do, see, this is the shell game that's played by modern scholarship. They try and take the canonical Gospels and push them to as late a date as they possibly can.
And they say, the Gospel of John probably was not even written in the first century and probably not even by John. Probably it was written by a disciple of John several decades after John would have died because it has this exalted view of Jesus.
What they need is the passing of time between the ending of the apostolic era. They need a whole bunch of time in there before this notion that Jesus was God could creep into Christianity. So they say the Gospel of John probably was written around 150, 160, 170.
Then they want to take the Gospel of Thomas and they want to move its date back as early as they possibly can so that they can get Thomas back very close to John. See, if they can do that, they can play a shell game with the Gospel of John, get the dating of the Gospel of John very late, and then they can play a shell game with the Gospel of Thomas and get the dating of the Gospel of Thomas very early, then what have they done?
They've made those two Gospels contemporary. And then the argument about authorship and canonicity is up for grabs. And I totally reject that. Our four Gospels were written, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, written in the first century.
They're apostolic and they're canonical. And the Church always knew that they existed. And there's no good evidence that the Gospel of John was written any time after 90 AD. And that's the latest that most conservative scholars who would be in our theological camp would put the Gospel of John is about 90 AD.
So that puts John as a very young man during the life of Jesus, which he probably was in 20s, something like that. And that makes him a very old man by the time he died and writing the Gospel of John very late.
There's no doubt it was written by John the Apostle. There can be no doubt about that. But what skeptics try and do is they try and question the dating of the canonical Gospels. And then they try and rework the Gospel of Thomas to make it much earlier.
And by doing so, they try and move them close together in order to... then they become contemporaries. And then it's up for grabs. Which one of them do we choose? That's part of the shell game of dating those Gospels.
But these pseudepigraphal writings, I don't know of anybody who would date them earlier than the second century.
Any of them.
Any other questions about those? Under letter E, why do we reject the pseudepigrapha? We talked about why we reject the apocryphal writings. Why do we reject the pseudepigrapha as canonical? Number one, they do not meet the criteria for canonicity.
And I don't know why I left such a big space for the word canonicity there in your notebook. Just in case you have to write.
Big.
They do not meet the criteria for canonicity. They're not written by apostles. They're authenticity. They fail on that. They're not orthodox. They have no authority. They were not accepted widespread by the Christian church, so they do not have those qualities of canonical God-inspired books.
Number two, they contain false doctrine, errors, and inaccuracy. It is not difficult to spot the false doctrines in these pseudepigraphal writings when you compare them to the New Testament Gospels and the Epistles.
And number three, these books have never enjoyed even moderately widespread acceptance by the people of God. These books have never enjoyed even moderately widespread acceptance by the people of God. Again, to reiterate, the Nag Hammadi Library and the pseudepigraphal works, they were accepted by a little sect of people, a Gnostic sect of a heretical group that believed unorthodox things regarding Jesus.
They didn't believe what the New Testament taught about Jesus, otherwise they would have embraced the canonical books of the New Testament that were written by the apostles.
Yes? Yeah, good question.
Discovered in 1945, is there reference to these books prior to that? I don't know that there is any reference to these books prior to 1945. Yeah, I don't know about that. I'd have to do some more reading on that.
Well, I'm going to get to this in the objection here in just a second, so I don't want to jump ahead of myself. Are there any other questions about what we've covered so far? Let's deal with this objection that is at the end of our lesson here.
Archaeologists have recently discovered the lost books of the Bible which show us that we don't have accurate information in our Bibles about Jesus and his teachings. That's a claim. It gets regurgitated out of the pit of hell every Easter, every Christmas time, that gets regurgitated right out of the lowest circle of hell, put out on the headlines, and circulated on social media.
Recent discoveries discovered the lost books of the Bible, and these show us that we don't have all the information or accurate information about Jesus and the teaching of the apostles. How do you answer that from what we've studied so far?
They were rejected?
These books were rejected. Couldn't we also point out that in... Well, let me back up. What I want you to identify sometimes is that in objections that people raise, there are all kinds of hidden assumptions in the wording of the objection.
Archaeologists have recently discovered the lost books of the Bible. What is the hidden objection? What is the hidden presupposition that has worked into that objection? Yeah, the books can be lost.
Right?
That these books were ever lost or accepted to begin with, as if they just... You know, the guy traveling with the Bible one day, the binding got bad, and he loaded up on his camel, and that book of Thomas dropped out into the sand, and it was lost to all of history, until some shepherd boy put it in an earthenware jar and buried it with a bunch of fertilizer somewhere, and then we discovered it in 1945.
Right? That's the assumption. That's the presupposition worked into the objection, that God cannot preserve His Word, or He has not preserved His Word. The presupposition is that Thomas and all these other books were accepted as part of the Bible at some point.
Right? That's the presupposition behind that, that they were accepted as part of the Bible, that they were assumed to be canonical at some point in the past, and that somehow, lost to history, they just fell out of the binding somewhere along the way, and they were lost, and now we have recently discovered it.
That's the presupposition that's worked into that objection. And you have to challenge that at the beginning. So someone raises this objection. My first question is, how were they lost? How do you know it was lost?
Didn't somebody have to accept it as found or part of it before it could be lost? Who did that? Who lost it? Where was it lost? How was it lost? See, those are all the assumptions that are baked into that objection.
And you have to challenge the assumption itself, because the assumption itself is not valid. Yeah, Brian? What's that? As if there was ever any loss to start with, right? Yeah, this objection assumes that all these books were accepted as canonical at some point.
That is false. That's the false presupposition. That's false. Never was. These books were never accepted as canonical. Ever. Ever. So what do you mean they're lost?
If.
What you mean by lost books of the Bible is there are some ancient writings that mention Jesus from the 2nd, 3rd century, that's not the Bible. Those are not the canonical books. So if your assumption is that any ancient writing that mentions Jesus must be accepted as canonical, then you're right.
Those were lost.
Books, in that sense.
But you can't assume that. And that's not what we mean by canonical. And that's not the standard of canonicity or inspiration. Just that a book mentions Jesus.
Yes,.
Angelica? Yeah. Presupposition? Yeah.
She was mentioning Carl Sagan's show on the cosmos and how there are presuppositions that are worked into that as well. Yeah, Mike? They're on the History Channel. You don't know where the scholars are at.
If you dial into A &E or the History Channel, you'll see them lined up. They stack them up like cordwood, one after another, to come in and try and discredit Scripture. That's where you'll find them. You'll notice that on the History Channel documentaries that talk about the real story of Jesus, they're not interviewing R .C. Sproul or John MacArthur or Phil Johnson or Justin Peters or Paul Washer or any of the good guys.
They're not interviewing any of them. They're interviewing some head of a religious department from Stanford University who has his PhD and trying to discredit the New Testament. Or they're interviewing Bart Ehrman.
Or they're interviewing the head of the humanities department at Boston College or something like that. They're not interviewing anybody who has done any serious scholarship on these issues. They're religious studies majors that are these scholars.
They're professors of secular universities whose job and whose agenda is to try and rewrite the early history of Christianity in order to make it more palatable and, of course, in order to discredit the true claims of the New Testament.
And they always begin with the assumption that we've worked into the objection here, that books can be lost, that God has no ability to preserve it. He can write a book or that the assumption that every book that mentions Jesus is therefore legitimate or that there was no idea of canonicity or there was no standard of canonicity or apostolic authorship.
These standards didn't exist. The Christians really, for hundreds of years, didn't even know which books were in and which books were out. These are all of the assumptions that are built into that entire exercise of trying to discredit New Testament books.
And the agenda is always the same. The agenda is always the same and that is to discredit the 27 canonical books of our New Testament. To discredit them and to try and lend credibility to any and everything that isn't in your New Testament.
That is always the end goal. Oh, sorry.
PBS, yep.
Alright.
So, how do we respond to these writings? This is the last question we'll answer in number 5. How do we respond to these writings? Basically, understand the true nature of the writings. Are you going to be lost if you read the Gospel of Thomas?
I mean, not lost spiritually. You might be lost and like, what does that mean? But you're not going to be lost spiritually if you read the Gospel of Thomas. So, can you read these Gospels? There's some historical value here in understanding Gnosticism.
They're understanding the idea of Gnosticism and what they taught and how this influenced early people of all religions and walks of life as the spirit of the age in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. Full-blown Gnosticism coming really to its peak at that time.
So, there's some value in it from a historical perspective. This is like we said that of the Apocrypha as well. There's some value there, historically speaking, of what these books describe. But just don't fall into the deception that these are in any way legitimate records of the life and ministry of Jesus and the Apostles.
Understand that the books were written by apostates and heretics and that they are religious in nature but they're not necessarily edifying. So, somebody that I heard this one time with the God's Word is your flashlight, you can walk through any man's field.
Basically, meaning that if you know the truth and you're grounded in the truth, you can read a book that is heretical like this. You can read those. I mean, I didn't endanger anybody's eternal security by reading from the Gospel of Thomas and quoting that earlier.
So, can you read these books? Yeah, you can read them. It might be interesting, curious. Go ahead, if you have that kind of free time. But if you have that kind of free time, I have some other things that I would suggest that you read.
And just understand your relationship to those books, that there is a huge difference between those books and Scripture. And the believer can identify those differences. An unbeliever will read the Gospel of Matthew and it will make as much sense to him as the Gospel of Thomas.
An unbeliever will read those two and they will both make equal sense. My pagan relatives, my pagan friends will read the Gospel of Matthew and they're not going to have a clue what any of that means.
And they could read the Gospel of Thomas and, yeah, it just sounds like another gospel. It just sounds like mumbo-jumbo. But a believer will read the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Thomas and you can tell the difference between those two.
It's quite evident. Yeah, Bryce. Very good. So to play a devil's advocate, could somebody make the claim that as Christians we're claiming that we have an understanding of Scripture because the Spirit of God has enlightened us.
The difference between that claim, which is 1 Corinthians 2, that by the Spirit of God we understand spiritual things. The difference between that claim and the Gnostic claim is that, my claim is that every person who has the Holy Spirit has that understanding.
The Gnostic claim is that within those who have the Holy Spirit, there are some who have different levels of knowledge. So there's different levels of knowledge between us. But my claim, or the claim of Scripture, is that to understand spiritual things you have to have the Spirit of God and you have to be regenerated and that the work of the Spirit of God is to give you eyes that can see and a heart that can respond and a heart that can know truth and an ability to know truth and that this is an effect of regeneration, not of enlightenment.
That regeneration brings that capacity to know spiritual things. Not a special level of enlightenment bringing that capacity to know those special things. It is available to everybody who comes to faith in Jesus Christ, that's right.
So it is not in that sense a level of knowledge that not everybody has access to. Well, it is in that sense a level of knowledge that not everybody has access to because you have to belong in the family of God to have that.
But the method by which you gain that knowledge and the means of that knowledge and that kind of knowledge is entirely different in the Christian view than in the Gnostic view.
From my knowledge of the NAR movement, which is the New Apostolic Reformation movement, that is a Gnostic, charismatic Gnostic sect of Christianity that believes in private revelations and things of that nature.
Do they use any of these books? I'm not aware that they do. I could ask Justin about that actually and see what he would say. But I don't believe that any of them would ever use any of these books. They don't need to and they can just write their own Gnostic theology out of whole cloth really.
Why refer something 1800 years ago when you can just fabricate your own stuff in modern day? Well, that is our time for today. Next week we will... Oh, everybody's dying to know. Hold on. Here we are.
This answers a long-awaited question. Apocalypses. That's what she was going to say. Everybody needs to know that. Get that on the recording. That's good. It's not apocalypses or I.
Apocalypses.
Oh, not apocalypses.
Apocalypses. Okay. Good.
Write it down. Thank you, Google.
Let's pray. Father, we.
Are grateful for what we have learned and for the fellowship that we enjoy in Your Son. We do thank You that by Your grace You have opened our eyes and our hearts to know the truth and to love the truth.
We thank You for the Spirit of God which resides inside of all those who are Yours and that we can have Him to illuminate the truth in Your Word to us. We're grateful for Your Word and that You preserved it for us again and we just thank You for that.
May You be glorified through our response to Your truth always. Be glorified also through our fellowship and our worship which is to follow here in Christ's name.
Good morning. If you're in the hallway would you come inside and join us as we sing? If you haven't already, please stand as we sing this morning Higher Ground.
I'm pressing on the upward way. New heights I'm gaining every day. Still pressing on. Lord, plant my feet on high.
Well, good morning everyone. Welcome this morning. Just a couple of announcements. They are still taking registrations for the spring conference with Phil Johnson from Grace to You. He's going to be here doing the life and legacy of Charles Spurgeon.
Sorry, May 21st to the 23rd. Shelly was taking registrations out there. We are about half full of capacity for only being open for three weeks. That's pretty good response to that registration. If you want to join us for that then make sure you get registered.
Tomorrow morning an email will go out to a whole bunch of other people. Let them know about that. We want to make sure that if you attend here and you want to get registered for that conference, you have a chance to do that.
Also, there is a choir practice today for the resurrection Sunday morning. That will be right after the service at 1215. You will meet back in this classroom that is in the corner of the sanctuary back there.
Just as we are going to be talking about this a little bit in the message today, I just remind you to pray for James Coates, the pastor in Edmonton and his family who was arrested for having church, basically, in Canada.
That made headlines recently and we ought to be praying for him and for his church and for other churches in Canada and for churches in America as well because if we don't think that that's going to come here then we are sorely mistaken.
That is exactly the trajectory. We want to remember that it's not overt persecution. It's not persecution in the sense that he is being tortured right now as we speak. It's not persecution in the sense that they are burning down his church.
Let's not equate it with that. It is serious. It is something we have never seen happen before in North America. We ought to be aware that that's what's going on and pray for those who are facing that, that they would have the courage to stand.
Ultimately, it would be my prayer that every church in Canada would open its doors and meet and worship and pray for him and for their government and it would be my same hope down here in America as well.
Open churches are a rarity and what we get to enjoy here on a Sunday morning is a rarity. Not only a rarity in our own nation but also a rarity when you consider it in terms of what the church around the world and across the ages has faced and what they have had to endure.
We still have the freedom to meet here and the grace to do so and we meet openly. We get to fellowship. We get to worship. This is a rarity and we ought to be thankful for it. We will pray about that.
I would ask you to turn to Psalm 17. Psalm 17 for our.
Scripture reading. The pre-script says.
It is a prayer of David. We're going to read together the entire Psalm. It is a prayer for protection against oppressors. Psalm 17. Somebody's app is reading Psalm 17 to him right now. Did you hear that?
Psalm 17. Hear a just cause, O Lord. Give heed to my cry. Give ear to my prayer which is not from deceitful lips. Let my judgment come forth from your presence. Let your eyes look with equity. You have tried my heart.
You have visited me by night. You have tested me and you find nothing. I have purposed that my mouth will not transgress. As for the deeds of men, by the word of your lips I have kept from the paths of the violent.
My steps have held fast to your paths. My feet have not slipped. I have called upon you for you will answer me, O God. Incline your ear to me. Hear my speech. Wondrously show your loving kindness, O Savior, of those who take refuge at your right hand from those who rise up against them.
Keep me as the apple of the eye. Hide me in the shadow of your wings from the wicked who despoil me, my deadly enemies who surround me. They have closed their unfeeling heart with their mouth. They speak proudly.
They have now surrounded us in our steps. They set their eyes to cast us down to the ground. He is like a lion that is eager to tear and is a young lion lurking in hiding places. Arise, O Lord. Confront him.
Bring him low. Deliver my soul from the wicked with your sword. From men with your hand, O Lord, from men of the world whose portion is in this life and whose belly you fill with your treasure. They're satisfied with children and leave their abundance to their babes.
As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness. I will be satisfied with your likeness when I awake. I just want you to notice verse 14 and 15. I want to give a comment on that real quick. Verse 14 and 15 are a contrast.
Verse 14 describes the only hope that the wicked have from men with your hand, O Lord, from men of the world whose portion is in this life. That is all that the wicked have is in this life. That's all that they get.
This is as good as it gets. And whose belly you fill with your treasure. That is that they enjoy prosperity and ease and wealth and all of the stuff that goes with that as Psalm 73 describes. They're satisfied with children and they leave their abundance to their babes and they heap up treasures and they give them to the next generation.
Their portion is in this life. And that is it. Contrast that with verse 15. As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness. That's the life to come and I will be satisfied with your likeness when I awake.
And that is a reference to the resurrection. We will be satisfied with the likeness of God when we awake in the resurrection. The wicked, their portion is in this life. The righteous, our portion is in the life to come.
Let's remember that. Please remain seated for the prayer today. Let's bow our heads. Father, we thank you for your gracious goodness to us in calling us to this place to worship you. We thank you for the freedom that we enjoy to do that.
As we look to you, our hearts are inclined to weep for and to feel the pain of affliction and suffering that is experienced by our brethren around the world. We think particularly today of James Coates and his family and what they have suffered and the affliction that they are enduring.
Lord, you know it all too well and you have appointed that for him and for that church at this time. We pray that through it you would sanctify them and encourage them in their faith, in their walk with you, in their sanctification.
We pray that through this you would accomplish your purposes for the church in Canada and America. We know, Father, that with wicked rulers and wicked magistrates over this nation, that your purposes will be accomplished for this nation and for your church.
And we only pray that you would, in the midst of that judgment, remember mercy, remember your people, deliver us from the hands of wicked men, and we pray that righteousness and justice would be done.
We can only long to see those who are afflicted be delivered from that, but we know that if you have appointed for your people affliction, that you will accomplish all your good pleasure through that.
And we pray also that you would strengthen and encourage those who are yours to stand in the truth, to stand in your word, and to lovingly and graciously witness the gospel of Jesus Christ to a watching world.
Comfort and protect and provide for the Coates family and that church. We pray that you would do the same for other believers who are persecuted for their faith around this world. We know that the blood of the saints is the seat of the church, and we know that the gates of hell and of death will not prevail against what you are building in this world.
And so we thank you that you have called us out of darkness and into light, that we might be partakers of the kingdom. Our hope and our portion is in the life that is to come, and that is where our reward is, that is where our Savior is, that is where all that we hope for in our inheritance, it all waits for us there.
So we pray that you would help us to not set our affections on this world and on the things that the world offers us, but to stand strong and to look for the world that is to come. For we know that in that we will receive the kingdom and the inheritance and all good things that you have predestined to those who are yours.
Be honored today through our worship and help our hearts to sing with fullness of joy. We pray that you would set our affections upon Christ and upon your truth and upon his glory, and that we as your people may be united together in one purpose with one heart, singing of one great God who has given us one great salvation.
We thank you for the unity that we enjoy in Jesus Christ and for his death which has made all of this possible. We praise you in the name of Christ our Lord. Amen.
Please stand. The psalmist says in Psalm 95, 1 and 3, O come, let us sing for joy to the Lord. Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving. Let us shout joyfully to him with psalms.
For the Lord is a great God and a great king above all gods. Verses 24 and 25. Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of his glory, blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority before all time and now and forever.
I fear my faith will, Christ will hold me fast when the tempter will... Let's bow together before we begin.
Our Father, we pray that today you would encourage our hearts in and through your word by the power of your spirit. We have sung out our hearts to you in worship and praise to you, our great God who has called us to hold fast to you and you who have ordained our holding fast.
You are the one who keeps us. You are the one who preserves us. You are the one who has ordained all of our steps and so we can look to you and ask that you would strengthen our hearts through your word and grant us together a love and a fellowship one with another.
That you may be honored through our obedience to your word and that you would by your word accomplish that which you have intended. Strengthen our hearts and give us courage and give us that gracious ability to hold fast to Christ and the confession of our hope that even in times of difficulty and trial that you would be glorified and honored through the obedience and the faithfulness of your people.
Strengthen us to that end we pray and guide our understanding and interpretation and our application of your word today we pray in Christ's name. Amen. Will you turn now please to Hebrews chapter.
10. Hebrews chapter.
10. We're going to read together beginning at verse 19 and as you're reading along with me I'm going to briefly offer a couple of comments to sort of set the stage for us when we're going to be getting into verse 23.
Beginning at verse 19, therefore brethren since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus by a new and living way which he inaugurated for us through the veil that is his flesh since we have that confidence and since we have a great priest over the house of God.
Therefore verse 22 we are to do these things. Let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
And we are verse 23 to hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful. And in verse 24 let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds not forsaking our own assembling together as is the habit of some but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near since we have confidence to enter the holy place since we have a great high priest over the house of God we are to draw near.
We are to hold fast. And we are to encourage others to do the same or encourage others to love and to good deeds not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together. This is the passage that we're looking at today looking mostly at verse 23 we live in a world that is constantly pressuring us to compromise.
I don't know if you've noticed it or not. I don't know if you've felt the pressure or at least have been observing other people who are certainly feeling the pressure to compromise. But the world says to us that the truth claims of scripture are narrow minded and bigoted and too exclusive.
The truth claims of scripture are offensive. They are passe. They are archaic and belong more to a bronze age and to an unenlightened people that's not fit for us in 21st century America and the western world.
We're too progressive for those truth claims and the moral standards of scripture. Well the moral standards are just they're bigoted. They're intolerant. They're narrow minded hateful oppressive misogynistic sexist homophobic and the goes on.
And the exclusive gospel claims the claim that if you do not belong to Jesus Christ by virtue of repentance and faith in him then you will perish everlastingly for your sin and in your sin. And that you will suffer the wrath of God for all of eternity.
That is just man. How narrow minded that is. How uninclusive that is. How exclusive that is. How can you believe such unscientific nonsense and the history of the bible. I mean really people to affirm the miracles of the bible.
Or that the world was created the entire universe was created in six literal 24 hour days to affirm as you and I do that the miracles of the old testament actually happened that a nation walked through the red sea on dry land.
That the.
Lord executed ten judgements on the nation of Egypt. That he made the sun stand still. That he made the sundial go back to believe as you and I do that Jesus performed miracles and healed the sick and raised the dead and that then he himself raised himself from the dead.
That what type of ignorant mythological bigoted unenlightened and unscientific people are you. Have you felt this. Have you heard this. This is the world. And the motto of the world. The battle cry is that you need to go along in order to get along.
And you need to. If you need to stop being so rigid and so uptight and so legalistic and so bigoted and so judgemental and so narrow minded how are you ever going to get along with the rest of the world.
If you believe the things that you do and you affirm the things that you do it is probably best for you Christian if you keep your own personal religious archaic bronze age convictions to yourself in your prayer closet inside of your house and keep them away from everybody else.
Don't bring them out into the public square. Don't preach them openly. Don't put them on YouTube. Don't write about them don't publish books about them. Just keep them to yourself. Keep your own religious convictions to yourself and don't say anything about it beyond the walls of this church if you want to get along with the rest of the world that is the world's battle cry.
You Christian are on the wrong side of history. Have you heard that. That has to be one of the most ignorant stupid and self contradictory phrases ever dreamed up in the darkened heart of man and his unenlightened and darkened mind that you could ever hear the wrong side of history.
You know how ignorant that statement is to claim somebody is on the wrong side of history. You have to know something before you can make that claim. Don't you. You have to know what what is the right side of history.
Right. And not only. And you can't determine what the wrong side of history is unless you know what the right side of history is. And you cannot know what the right side of history is unless you have some objective standard of right and wrong to judge what is right and what is wrong.
What if history is going off a dark cliff into a thousand years of darkness. Then wouldn't being on the wrong side of history make you on the right side of history. Wouldn't being on the wrong side of history be the right thing to be.
And in order to know if you are on the wrong side of history you'd have to know where history is going. And you'd have to know what the purpose of history is. And of course you can't know any of those things unless you believe that bronze aged unenlightened unscientific book that's sitting in your lap.
You'd have to believe that in order to even know what the right side of history is the pressure has increased in our age and it is continuing to do so and it is almost becoming palpable. I don't know if you've noticed that it almost seems like it's been ramped up since the beginning of November somewhere last year.
Around the beginning of November it seems like the pressure has increased and it is getting more and more. It's becoming tense. You can almost cut this with a knife in our own culture. Now as people are being cancelled people are being almost unpersoned in our contemporary culture.
If you know that reference almost being unpersoned for believing some of the things that we do. And I would suggest to you that it is only going to get worse. And if that is true then the reminder that we have the command that we have in verse 23 is very timely.
I didn't pluck this out of the sky if you're just joining us we've been building up to this. For I don't know how many years we've been in Hebrews but it's been a number. So this is just the next phrase that we're looking at in verse 23.
I didn't cherry pick this passage at all. This is just where we're at verse 23. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful. Now last week we looked at the exhortation in that sentence let us hold fast the confession of our hope.
And we saved the explanation of that that we are to do this without wavering and the motivation for that that he who promised is faithful. We saved that. For today let us hold fast the confession of our hope is the second of three let us exhortations that we've identified in this passage.
Let us draw near. Let us hold fast. And let us encourage one another to love and good deeds that is to do the same thing as we gather together. There's a corporate element to this there is a personal element to these commands.
And we are to do this in light of the fact that we have a great high priest over the house of God and in light of the fact that you and I now have confident and unfettered and open access to the throne room of God something never enjoyed under the old covenant.
And because those things are true because we have been given such a great gift you and I are to draw near. And you and I are to hold fast to that which we draw near to and that which we draw nearby. And then we are to encourage others to do the same.
So what does it mean to hold fast the confession of our hope. And in case you weren't here last week just review this for you for a moment. Holding fast the confession of our hope. Our confession is not the act of professing something.
It's not something we do in baptism. It's not something that we do publicly. It's not what we write. It's not what we say. It's not a mere profession. The confession is something objective outside of us.
It is that body of truth that doctrine of the gospel which has been handed down to us. We might say it is the faith once for all delivered to the saints. It is that objective body of truth that is true whether or not you and I believe it whether or not you and I ever existed.
Because it doesn't depend upon our response to it. It doesn't depend upon our subjective embrace of it. It is simply that which is true and that confession that body of truth that doctrine of truth that he has explained all the way through the book of Hebrews that you and I have a great high priest over the house of God who has given us this access to God he has done so by his once and for all death by which he has put away sin by the sacrifice of himself and perfected forever those who are sanctified those who are his he has perfected them by his death he has purchased them by his death.
And because he has done that you and I have confident access to him. That is the objective body of truth that you and I are to hold fast to that objective body of truth that confession is our confession of hope.
The hope that we have is not a feeling. It's not an emotion. It's not our response to it. The hope that we have is an objective reality. It is a confident expectation that we have an assurance a confidence that we have because these things are true.
Because these things are true you and I have hope not only in this life but also for the life to come. We have an eschatological hope of a kingdom and an inheritance and a reward and forgiveness and life eternal with God in heaven because of what Christ has done.
That is our hope. And you and I are to cling to that and to hold fast to that. And now the author answers the question how are we to do this. We are to do this without wavering without wavering. So what are we to do.
Hold fast that objective truth which is the source and the ground of your hope in this life and in the life to come. Hold it retain it seize it and don't let it go don't let go of it. And you are to do this without wavering.
This is the explanation that we're looking at this morning. We're to do this without wavering. That is a an expressive term. It is a colorful term that the author uses there. The phrase without wavering is the translation of one greek word aklenes aklenes meaning without or not.
And klenes which means to incline or to bend to one side it describes something that is bent. So if they were to use it in the verb form it would be used to describe the act of laying back or reclining as in a stretcher or in a bed or at a table or in a recliner.
If it were it would also be used to lean towards something or to bow towards something to have a to bend down towards something. That's the idea it was actually used in that day of having partiality towards something being partial towards something.
You bend that way. You and I use that language the same way today we use we talk about. Well I'm kind of inclined to something right. You have a partiality towards something. I kind of lean towards. And we use the same language to describe something that we are partial towards something that we are leaning toward.
Would you like to go out this afternoon to dinner with chinese food or with mexican food. You say well I'm kind of inclined. I'm kind of kleene. I'm kind of inclined to go to mexican right. Or I kind of lean I kind of lean towards going mexican this afternoon.
I have a partiality towards that. And Ed if you're listening I apologize for the cultural appropriation. But it's just a sermon illustration.
Right I have.
An inclination or a bent in a certain direction. That's the idea of kleene. Well a kleene means that you are without that bend where you don't have a bent or an inclination towards something. You are without any kind.
So the idea is not just wavering in the sense of something going back and forth or flopping around. But something that is stiff something that is immovable something resolute that does not incline one direction or another.
You say it's not bent or it's not inclined in which direction. In any direction. It's not inclined in any direction. It is straight up standing in something and it is immovable in what it stands on. So as long as we are describing something that is oriented toward our confession of hope that we have in Jesus Christ you stand immovable in that.
And you are not bent or inclined in any direction that the world pushes you. You are not bent or inclined in any direction that your internal desires or your flesh might drive you. You are without wavering.
You are without any inclination. The definition means without bending away or bowing in some direction to some alternate conviction. Unbending. And listen. The world pushes you in two ways. The world pushes you externally.
There is pressure externally all the time from the world around us to compromise on things. And I described some of the ways that that happens earlier right. As we started they seek to punish you for holding on to the truth.
You just want to meet with the church of God and fellowship and worship with him. Well don't you know that we are in the middle of a health crisis. Looking around I can see that all of you are panicked over that.
Don't you know that we are in the middle of a health crisis. What's the next crisis that's going to keep us from worshiping God? Environmental crisis? They've been blowing that trumpet since I was this tall.
For those of you on this side since I was this tall they've been blowing that trumpet. There's global cooling. There's global warming. There's climate change. There's always going to be some crisis that the world will force you try and force you to bend toward to compromise your convictions toward the world is always moving its goal posts.
They will try and cancel you for your convictions. They will try and run you out of town for your convictions. They will try and not give you a job because of your convictions. They'll take you off their servers.
They will boot you off of social media. They will not want you as part of their dinner parties. External pressure. And then there's internal pressure. There is something inside of us that loves the world and we have to crucify and mortify that constantly.
There is something inside of us that is inclined to go along to get along. It's called the flesh. There is something inside of us that longs for the days when things were different the days when we were different.
There is something inside of us that would always be tending to go back in that direction. Something wants to bend in that way. And the world like a magnet attaches to that thing inside of us and wants to bend us in any direction except the truth.
That's the lure of the world. And we are called in the midst of that to be unbending. To be unbending to not be inclined or bent in any direction other than positioned on the truth other than focused on the truth.
And we are to be resolute in it immovable a constancy a steadfast faithfulness to the truth. And unchanging by the way. Being unchanging is not a bad thing. People say you just need to change with the times.
How can you be so stuck in what was that the truth. Yeah. How can you be so stuck in the truth way back. Then you need to change with the times. Being unchanging and unchangeable is not a bad thing. God is unchanging and unchangeable.
He does not change. He is the same yesterday today and forever. His nature does not change. His purposes do not change. His promises do not change. And if that is the standard then changing to go along with the times is a horrible idea.
And you and I are to be resolute unbending faithfulness steadfast and not changing in it now. This doesn't describe a stoicism. I'm not describing a stoicism. You understand the difference between stoicism and being resolute in a position or a conviction.
Stoicism is where you are unchanged by anything because you have no emotional reaction to what goes on. Stoicism is just an apathy. It's just my wife could die today. And stoically I would just say ok.
Surah surah. Yeah. I'm unaffected by it unchanged by it. It doesn't have any effect on my life doesn't have any effect on my thinking. I'm just gonna go on with it. That's stoicism. That's not what we're describing.
This is not describing being unbent or unchanged emotionally. Being unaffected emotionally having no passions having no affections no desires or loves or anything like that. It doesn't describe not weeping or mourning over the lost or over the loss of certain things or over the way that the world is going.
That would be stoicism. This is not describing a stoic response to anything. It is describing a commitment to the truth an unbending.
Unwavering.
Commitment to the truth that does not flex with the whims of the world that does not flex or go along with the spirit of the age. It is holding fast to the gospel. Which we know is our hope. We have made a commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ and we have abandoned our own righteousness.
And we have abandoned our own hopes at righteousness and our own ability to please God. We have abandoned all of that. And instead you and I have embraced. If you're in Jesus Christ you have embraced the doing and the dying of another who died in your stead.
And that and his work is your hope that is your confidence. Don't waver from. That doesn't mean that you're unaffected by anything that goes around you. It means that you're unbent by anything that goes on around you.
Look the rains come and they blow against that steel beam that is sitting in the concrete that is immovable. The rains come and it gets cold and it gets hot. The beam is affected by everything going on around it in terms of what it experiences.
But it is unbent by them. That is what you and I are to be. We might get grow cold and hot. We might grow affectionate towards something we might have loves we might be discouraged and disappointed and cry.
But we're unbent by that. We don't conform to the world and change our tune and go along with the marching drum of Satan's latest idea just because it's fashionable and desirous. We don't do that. We're unbent by these things.
We reject the lives of the world and all of its priorities. And there's always a temptation to bend. And in every generation every generation of Christians faces the temptation to waver to be bent and to be moved by everything around us.
It looks different in every generation. Satan is like a football coach. I usually don't try and tie Satan to football at any point just simply because I enjoy the game. But Satan is like a football coach.
He calls the plays and every time his team steps up to the line of scrimmage it's a different play that he's calling so it looks different. But he always has the same goal. It's the same game. It's the same goal that's in mind though his plays change over the ages.
In the first century the desire or the impetus to bend for the first century Christians was different than it is for us in the first century. To those who were reading this epistle originally the desire to bend came in the form of being pulled back to that old system.
Which is why the author has spent ten and a half chapters reminding his readers of the inferiority of the old covenant that those sacrifices in the temple and the priesthood and the priest and all that was done under that old covenant simply prepared the way for the new covenant.
And that the new covenant is superior in every way. And the first century Christians who were Jews to whom this epistle was written they were looking back to that old system and saying wouldn't it be great to go back to that.
I mean the smells and the bells of that sacrifice and all of the forms of that and all the feelings of that. That's where our family is at. And we've kind of come out of that. And we've embraced Jesus the Messiah.
But all of my cousins and my aunts and my uncles and my mom and dad are all back there. And they're wanting me to go back and embrace that and to get off this Jesus fella and to leave this whole Christianity thing in the dust and go back to what we've known for centuries our whole family is there and there was pressure there for them to compromise by going back to the old covenant.
And the author saying you have nothing under the old covenant why would you want to go back to that inferior covenant. In fact this is the direct application of this passage in terms of the author here look at chapter 10.
Verse.
Chapter 10 beginning at verse 32 here is how he after the warning passage addresses it to these Christians. This is the direct application to those first century Christians. But remember the former days when after being enlightened you endured a great conflict of sufferings partly by being made a public spectacle through reproaches and tribulations and partly by becoming sharers with those who were so treated for you showed sympathy to the prisoners and accepted joyfully the seizure of your property knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and a lasting one.
Therefore do not throw away your confidence which has a great reward for you have need of endurance so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what was promised for yet in a little while he who is coming will come and will not delay.
But my righteous one shall live by faith and if he shrinks back my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.
Was the author saying. Remember those early days when you first came to Christ and you were excited and you suffered the seizure of your property and the reproaches of those who cast their reproach upon you for your commitment to Christ.
When you left all of that behind you came into the new covenant. You made that confession of faith. Remember that times were good and now you're longing to go back to that. And the author says if you go back to that you are shrinking back to the destruction of your soul because there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins.
If you walk away from the new covenant that's the direct application to those first century Christians. They were like in many ways like the children of Israel coming out of Egypt. Remember that he came out of Egypt and the Lord showed his deliverance by the ten plagues upon the land of Egypt culminating with that last one in Passover.
Finally Pharaoh drove them out got into the wilderness and they left and all of them they plundered. The Egyptians went out into the wilderness and they were out there and came all the way through the Red Sea.
And what did they say when they got on the other side of the Red Sea. Remember how good it was back in Egypt how good it was. We had melons and we had onions and we had leeks. Do you remember the fresh vegetables the cucumbers were to die for.
And now we're out here in the wilderness and we're eating manna every day and looking for water. Remember the good times back in Egypt. And you want to drop yourself parachute yourself right into that reality and say good times in Egypt.
You were slaves. Yeah. But don't you remember sitting by the bank of the Nile how great that was. You were down at the bank of the Nile gathering water to make bricks like Dory the clown fish. They have no memory whatsoever.
All they can remember is the good things that existed back then. They want the cucumbers and the leeks. And they forget the slavery and the misery and the brick making and the whippings and the beatings and waking up at sunrise and working past dark.
They forgot all of that and their hearts were bent clean ace to Egypt and to slavery and to what they had the first century Christians the same way. I remember the old covenant. Remember how good that was.
What was good about it. The fact that your high priest is a reprobate who hates God and crucified your Messiah. That's what you think is good. The sacrifices. Every month you thought that was good. Never knowing if your sins were forgiven.
You thought that was good having to do that every month you think that was good. The priesthood which was continually turning over and over again never knowing who the next high priest was going to be.
Never knowing if he offered adequate intercession for you. Never knowing if what he did was perfectly good for sacrifice for your sins. Never having your conscience cleansed. You think that was good. That was the old covenant.
Don't go back to that. Hold fast your confession of faith firm until the end. Do not be bent by your relatives and your friends and everybody from your past who says hey. Come on back to the world and enjoy that.
You and I are to be immovable without wavering. We are to hold fast our confession of faith for us in our context. It's a little bit different like I say Satan's the head coach. And not just to the Seahawks but like I said.
He's the head coach.
Satan's the head coach and he calls the plays and the play is different. In the first century the play was get all of your unbelieving family members to bring you back into Judaism. Today the play is just a slightly different today.
The play call is get them to compromise their moral standards and compromise their conviction of the truth to go back to the be more worldly to stop telling us what the truth is to stop proclaiming the gospel and to stop standing for Christ and his church.
That's the play call. Today you and I are tempted to go back to the old covenant. Offer animal sacrifices at a temple in Jerusalem. There's no temptation there.
But there is.
The temptation to you compromise you compromise what you believe. Or you are a hateful sexist misogynistic intolerant bigot whose opinion is not even worthy to be heard. In today's environment you deserve to not even be regarded as a person because of what you believe.
Then the pressure is well if I am going to believe this be quiet about it and not say anything about it and hopefully I'll be accepted by the world. If you don't go along and try and gain the world's approval they're going to want to destroy your reputation.
If you do not go along intellectually with the world they're going to regard you as an unscientific rube of a bygone era. They will say you actually believe in miracles and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
You know how unscientific that is says the people who believe. There are 666 genders. I chose that number intentionally says the people who believe. There are that many genders. You know how unscientific that is.
You know how unenlightened that is. Do you really care what the world thinks. You shouldn't listen. If you have the approval of the king of kings why would you care what the peasants think. That's the only thing you and I have to worry about is if we have the approval of the king of kings.
And if we have his approval then the world will be damned.
Literally.
So why do we care what they think. Let's stand for the truth. And do so unbendingly. If you upset people by your stand against certain lifestyles or certain predilections or certain views of gender or whatever it is.
If you're going to upset people with that that's the world's way of thinking. You're either going to compromise the truth and bend towards it or you're going to stand in the truth unwavering currently.
If you do not affirm and celebrate every godless anti-christian conviction and world view. If you will not affirm and celebrate every aberrant and destructive lifestyle every progressive Marxist ideology and every satanic spirit of the age lie belched up from the pit of hell.
You're public enemy number one. I think you and I need to get used to being public enemy.
Number one.
And I say own it own it because we're not the public's enemy we're only their enemy because we tell them the truth and if you don't tell them the truth you're not their enemy. The world hates you because you're not of the world.
If you were of the world the world would not love its own but because he called you out of the world therefore for this reason the world hates you. You're his and you were his from before the foundation of the world when the father gave you to the son and the son claimed you were his you were his then and because he called you out of the world for that reason the world hates you let the world hate you are to hold fast your confession of faith firm until the end and do so without wavering and without compromise and without bending in any direction and all around us there is compromise on every side and at the risk of dating this message and dating what I'm about to say I'll give you some examples from just within the last month.
Within the last month a Christian adoption service has decided that they are now going to cater to homosexual couples. They weren't forced to do this. Nobody was going to prison for doing this. They just decided that they were going to do it.
A Christian adoption agency Max Lucado just three weeks ago issued a public apology for something he said about homosexuality back in 2004 he said I regret that my words were used to harm people. You say what did he say that was so hurtful and harmful?
He said what the Bible says about homosexual lifestyle and activity. He said that back in 2004 three weeks ago he issued an apology for it. For saying what the Bible says Now does that mean that he's broken?
Does that mean that he's an apostate? Doesn't mean that. It doesn't mean that he is bent over like a single blade of grass in a tornado right now. He's bent. He's Kleenex. He's not holding the truth without wavering The Southern Baptist Convention this June as part of their normal annual convention discussion.
They're going to bring up critical race theory and social justice and the whole woke progressive Christianity nonsense. All of the CRT and how we need to read the Bible in the light of modern racial theories and the 1619 project and all of that liberal idea that has taken over the gospel coalition that is about to take over the entire Southern Baptist denomination.
They want to discuss that at their convention. Not only that but they're going to have conversations about women in ministry and women being pastors. Last year, one year ago they were having a discussion about whether Beth Moore would be a good president for the Southern Baptist Convention.
Listen, if you are at the point where you are discussing and having conversations about women being pastors and allowing homosexuals to be pastors of your churches you're gone. There's nothing to discuss.
You're gone. It's just a matter of time before you fall off the cliff. You don't even discuss these things. See that's wavering. Right? Let's just have a conversation about it. Let's just have a conversation about it.
I'm not saying we need to change anything. Let's just have a conversation about it. You know how that always ends? Changing things. That's how it always ends because that's always the goal. To just talk about it.
Just waver. Let's just get us to all waver until we finally break and bend. That's the game plan. That's the coach's goal.
In our day. The world is playing.
The tune. Satan's calling the plays and the visible church is marching along with it. And unbending men and women are becoming fewer and fewer. To quote that great philosopher Elrond. Our list of allies grows thin.
Gandalf. Our list of allies grows thin and it is growing thinner by the day. It's growing thinner by the day. You better get used to watching people that you thought were once solid in the faith fold like a house of cards in the days that are to come.
Because people that we think have been anchored in truth and are unbending and unbendable, they're going to bend and waver and break. You see, when you start making apologies for things you said that were biblical 15 years ago, you're already wavering.
Now the question is not whether or not you will break once you start to waver. The question is only how much pressure does the world have to put on you before you break. Because you've already demonstrated that you're willing to bend.
You've already demonstrated that you're willing to waver. And once you start wavering the world never says Oh, you made an apology? Oh, you don't really believe that now? Okay, well, we'll just ignore it.
We'll forget it. Let's just let it all pass. Has that ever happened in the history of our modern day? No. It just gets worse. They ratchet up the pressure. You can do nothing to satisfy the world, so don't even give them the first step.
You can do nothing to satisfy the world. Except full abandonment of everything that is true. That will satisfy the world. Join them. Celebrate with them. Affirm everything that they affirm. Affirm every spirit of the age lie.
Affirm it all, and then they will embrace you. Then they will love you.
But short of that, be ready.
To start watching your heroes fall. Because it's already started. It's not going to get any better. Unless the Lord rescues us and sends revival to this land it is not going to get any better. Though the list of our allies grows thin it is not ours to worry about how many people stand with us.
It is ours to stand. That's all we're called to do. We're not called to make other people stand and we're not called to worry and spend blood, sweat, and tears agonizing over how few of us are actually standing.
We're just called to stand. That's what God has given to us to do. To hold fast to our confidence, our hope our convictions, our confession and to do so without wavering without doubt or unbelief. Because you and I have not followed cleverly devised fables.
Our confidence is not in myths and stories and genealogies and old tales. Our faith is not built on shifting sand. We have the truth and there is no excuse for unbelief. There is no excuse for apostasy and there is no excuse for shrinking back to destruction.
We have the truth. We know the truth. It is revealed and we are called, yea, we are commanded to hold fast to our confession of hope firm and to the end. To do so without wavering, without bending in any direction that the winds blow and to not do so chasing the world and its approval and chasing the world and its reputation or chasing the world and its acceptance.
In any way we are to do so without bending. Hold fast your confession of your hope without wavering. Because you have the confidence that you have access to the throne room of heaven. Full access to the throne of God because of what Christ has done.
And further, you have a high priest over the house of God who intercedes for you. He is in heaven right now for you. And if that is true, there is no excuse for compromise. If you compromise, it is only because you have failed to understand and apprehend the reality that you have full access to the throne room of God and that you have a great high priest over the house of God.
Those two things are true. You hold fast, Christian. You hold fast without wavering. There is no excuse for unbelief and no excuse for compromise. Why would you let go of something that is that sure and that certain and that steadfast.
That's inexcusable. That's the explanation. That's what it means to do this without wavering. The next one would be the motivation if we had time to do that. We're not going to. I do realize that I just preached on one Greek word ekklines.
But in English it was two words without wavering so we actually got twice as much done as you might have originally thought. So that's the explanation of how we are to hold fast our confidence. We are to do so without wavering.
Next time, next week we will look at what the faithfulness of God means and what it means to this. Why is this a motivation that God is faithful. Why is that a motivation for us holding fast to our confession of hope firm and to the end.
It certainly is a motivation. So we'll deal with that next time. Let's pray together. Father you are so gracious and so good to save a people for your own eternal glory and then to secure them in this world and to secure them everlastingly.
We thank you that our salvation does not rest upon our ability to cling to you. You have commanded us to do so but you have also given us the strength to do so and your word encourages us to do so. We pray at this time in the midst of this land where we are at that you would give us spines of steel that you would strengthen our hearts in your word and by your truth to be unashamed of the truth unashamed of the gospel and unashamed of your word that we may stand as your people without wavering in the face of all of the world's hatred and hostility that we would do so with love and grace, that we would do so with courage and conviction.
We desire that you would be honored and glorified through the stand of your people for the gospel truth. We know that your word always accomplishes what you intend for it. Your word always accomplishes what you send it forth to do and so we can have absolute confidence in your sovereignty and in your power to use your word and us as your ambassadors to reach a lost and dying world.
We pray for revival amongst those who are around us in our own hearts as well but that it may truly be something that may spread across this entire land. We know that it can only happen through the faithful preaching of your word and as a work of your Holy Spirit so we pray that you would do that and in the midst of whatever you have called us to we pray that you would give us the courage to be faithful.
If you have appointed for us exile from this world then we will join the ranks of those who have gone before who have also been exiled for their faith. If you have appointed for us suffering for our faith we will embrace that alongside of others who have suffered likewise for the faith.
For you will give us the courage in the moment and in the hour when we will face these things to do what pleases you. Strengthen us now with that hope and in our confession and may you give us grace to hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering firm to the very end with full assurance because Christ is in heaven for us and intercedes and we ask that you would do this for his sake and in his name.
Amen. The communion service that we had planned was, well I had a whole transition from what should have been the end of the message to end of communion so I will just wing this because we have a high priest over the house of God who has given us access to the throne room of God we are able to do so without wavering we are able to hold fast without wavering our faith and our confidence rests not in our own righteousness and not in our own doing or our own ability to hold fast or our own ability to be faithful.
Our faith and our confidence especially that for eternal life and righteousness rests upon the complete work of the Lord Jesus Christ in his perfect life and in his perfect death. So the gospel message is a very simple one that you and I are under the wrath of God that we deserve his judgment for our sins.
We have lied we have stolen, we have blasphemed his name we have dishonored him, we have worshipped other gods, we have not honored our parents, we have lusted after people who are not our spouses we have committed adultery in the heart, we have committed murder in the heart.
All of those violations of the Ten Commandments deserve the wrath and judgment of God upon us. We deserve to be punished, we deserve an eternal hell because that is what our sin has merited, that is what our sin has warranted.
But the good news is that God sent his son the Lord Jesus Christ who lived a perfect life into this world he lived a perfect life fulfilling all of the law, he did so on our behalf so that in his dying he might bear the wrath and the penalty and the sin of all who will ever believe so that there is in the person of Christ and because of his work righteousness to avail for you before the throne of God and there is forgiveness available for you before the throne of God because of what Christ has done.
The good news is that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ which was made for sinners is able to forgive you and make you righteous in the sight of God which you desperately need. You have no righteousness, we have no righteousness apart from him.
In fact all we have is a sin debt that must be atoned for but Jesus Christ died to save sinners and if you will come to him in repentance and faith he will forgive your sin, he will save you everlastingly and he will adopt you into his family and give you his righteousness, that is the gospel.
It is that that we celebrate in our communion meal, in our time together in worship and fellowship around the Lord's table. The bread and the juice are not magical or mystical elements that somehow convey salvation.
This is not a re-sacrificing of the body and the blood of Jesus Christ. These elements are symbols of what was done for us on the cross 2 ,000 years ago. They are symbols of that which has redeemed us namely the sacrificial death of the Lord Jesus Christ.
If you are not a believer here this morning I would encourage you to not partake of these elements because scripture warns that you are eating and drinking judgment to yourself because you are doing this in an unworthy manner.
This is for believers, this is for those who are Christians. So if you are uncertain as to whether or not you are a Christian, don't partake. And Christian, if you are living in an unrepentant sin and you know this and you are not repenting of that and you are not battling it do not let, do not partake of these elements.
That is to eat and drink in an unworthy manner as well. We are to judge ourselves, that is we are to examine our own hearts and we are to confess our sins to the Lord. And the idea is not that we are perfect before we partake of communion but the idea is that we are repentant before we partake of communion.
Acknowledging that our sin is what made the sacrifice of Christ necessary and His sacrifice is what made our salvation possible and that is what we are remembering.
So.
Let us bow our heads, we'll have a time of self examination and then I will lead us in prayer and then call the ushers forward to help serve the elements.
Let's bow our heads. Our Father. The weight.
Of our sin was more than we could ever bear even one sin that we have committed would be worthy of eternal judgment because of the great God and the glorious God against whom that sin is committed. And if we were to bear our own sin everlastingly we would be undone and we are thankful that you made us to know the depth of our own sin so that we could find remedy in the person of Christ and in His work.
So we confess to you our iniquity. We confess to you our transgression. We know that we are still sinners. We long to be made perfectly righteous in all of our conduct and in our doing and yet in this world we are still shackled to these bodies of death.
We long to be sanctified and to grow in holiness and in obedience and we long for grace to mortify sin, to put it to death to fight the fight against sin and to live in obedience and in righteousness.
And we thank you for your forgiveness and your provision of forgiveness for those sins that we are aware of and even those sins that we are not aware of for if you were to make us aware of all of our iniquities even right now it would overwhelm us to know of all of the ways in which we have violated your law and which we have sinned against you in thought, word and deed.
So we confess this to you, we thank you for the provision of Jesus Christ and for the full and free forgiveness that is ours through Him and because of His work and so we trust not in our own righteousness and we trust not in our own doing but in the sacrifice of Christ and Christ alone, in whose name we pray Amen.
Will the ushers come forward and help serve communion? On the night in which our Lord was betrayed He took the bread and when He had broke it He said, take, eat this is my body which is broken for you.
Do this in remembrance of me. Also.
He took the cup after supper and said this is the new covenant in my blood do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.
Let's pray.
Father we thank you for the perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ who has perfectly atoned for all those who have placed their faith in Him and all who will. That sacrifice is sufficient for our sin and for our righteousness and we thank you for it.
We thank you also for the grace that has opened our eyes and our hearts that we may reach out and lay hold of Christ and eternal life with Him. Thank you for that hope that we have, that confession that is true and thank you for causing us to embrace that and we pray for grace to hold fast to it and to Christ for whose glory and whose sake and in whose name we pray.
Please stand.
Till I am just a lamb.
Thank you, have a good week.